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Foreign. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello, CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. Let's talk about summertime. That's what we're doing today. I know it is not summer. For absolutely everybody listening to the podcast, shout out to all of you who might be in the exact opposite time of year. For a lot of you listening though, we are coming up on summer, right? I am recording this podcast on I don't know what might be considered like the first official day of summer break here in Louisville, Kentucky. Yesterday was Memorial Day, so today we're like into. Into the thick of. Kids are off. School is over. It's still so hard for me to believe. It just. I know it's so cliche that it goes so fast, but this year really did fly by. The weather has been, I know, all, all over the United States, the weather has been so uncooperative. It has been rain, rain, rain. It really doesn't feel like summer. We haven't been to the pool, but alas, summer is upon us. And I thought it would be hopefully helpful and interesting for me to kind of just do an episode about summer. Summer is such an interesting time for parents in particular. This episode will be, you know, I'm really, I'm. There's a lot, obviously, like my life as a parent, a parent of young kids. It's a huge, huge, huge part of how I run my business and how my life works. So I like to speak to that and I like speaking in particular to people who are in a similar season to me because I very much understand the unique challenges that we face as parents. And summer does pose some new and different challenges. Right? So I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how I am approaching summer. This is like my, I guess my 10th summer, as it could be 11th. I'm not sure about the math there, but it's my 10th or 11th summer as a mom who also owns a business. And I have learned so much probably too slowly. Like, it's taken me a decade to get some of these lessons through my head. So I want to share what I am thinking about. I have made a lot of mistakes in the summertime. I have made things harder for myself. I have, you know, now the wisdom of this decade under my belt. And I wish that somebody had told me some of these things. So I'm going to be touching on those. But then I also want to talk about. And I might do this second part first. I want to just kind of even zoom out from the parent thing and talk about summer in general and the thoughts that you might be having about summer as a business owner, the thoughts you might be having about selling in the summertime. So let's actually start there. I. I remember talking about this last year, and it's probably a point that I'll bring up every single year because it just can't be talked about enough. Summer is one of my favorite times to sell. Um, spoiler. I always love selling. So I could make the case that every time of year is excellent for selling. But that's actually the whole point, right? I talk to a lot of my clients and listeners and friends about, you know, selling and also just, like, getting clients and the time of year that we find ourselves in. And it's very common to have thoughts like, is summer really the right time? Should I be launching in summer? Are people gonna buy in the summer? Aren't people busy? Aren't I busy? Like, I have vacation. They vacation. Maybe I should wait. Maybe I should skip a launch. Maybe we should just, like, come back in the fall when people are more focused. I know a lot of you have been tempted to have this thought, or maybe you even have this thought really strongly. I want to make the case to you why summer is a fantastic time to be selling. And I do not think that you should skip your sales. I do not think that you should slow down in the summer. In fact, I think summer is a great time to lock in. Okay? One of the reasons for that is because a lot of people take their foot off the gas in the summer, right? So if you have competitors, quote, unquote, you have, you know, other people in your industry, they might be going on vacation, right? Things can be a little less noisy in the summertime. It's a great time to be in front of your ideal client. Your ideal client still has all the same problems. Their problems don't go away in the Summertime. And in fact, for some of you, those, those client problems are exacerbated in the summer, especially if you're a parent or somebody else who, you know, this seasonality is, you know, think about the ways that it impacts them. I really love as an exercise to think about across all different niches, and I have clients across all different industries. And if you put any industry in front of me, any topic, any niche, I would be able to come up with a reason why. Summer is a fantastic time for you to sell and for them to be buying. Right? So it really is a thought exercise as much as anything else, where as much as your brain wants to say, yeah, but what if they're not paying attention? What if they're busy, their kids are home. I want to encourage you to try flipping that and ask yourself, why Might this make it an excellent time? Right. One of my favorite examples of this is one of my clients is a life coach for working moms. And hey, as we're going to talk about here in a minute, you know, all of us have our young kids home, and as working parents, that can be a huge stressor. It can be. I mean, it's lovely in so many ways. And summer memories and popsicles and vacations and pool day, like all the good stuff, right? But let's be honest, many of us are creatures of routine and habit, especially when you are a working parent. And so the problems that working parents and working moms have have just now exacerbated, have become bigger, have become more magnified with the added pressure of, what are my kids doing in the summertime? Do we have camps? Do we have a sitter? What are we doing? Juggling with your partner, et cetera. Right. So your clients might have more going on, but we could actually look at that and say, why does my client need me now more than ever? Why is now a great time? I'm also thinking about one of my clients who just had an absolutely amazing launch. She's going to be coming onto the podcast soon. Her topic is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. And I bring that up because one of the things that we kind of talked about in her messaging, again, like, I, I love talking about niches like this because you might think to yourself, like, that's not a quote unquote need, Right? Like, learning a new language for a lot of people might be considered a hobby. Do people make time for that stuff in the summer? You might be tempted to have that thought. We decided to take her positioning and her messaging through, through the angle of Summer school, right? Like, and camp, actually, she kind of played with it. It was quite fun, where it was like, hey, remember when you were a kid and you got to go to camp? Or like, kids these days get to go to horseback riding camp and, you know, I don't know, basket weaving camp. And it's like, how come as, just because we're grownups, we don't give ourselves the gift of learning something new? So she played around with this angle of like, summer school for grownups, right? Like giving yourself the gift of learning a new skill in the summertime. Summer again, at least in the Northern hemisphere in the United States, is a time where there's more daylight. And a lot of us are more energetic in the summertime because the sun's coming up early, it's earlier, it's setting later. It just kind of like we have more sort of like energetic hours or waking hours. And so it could stand to reason that people have more time. You know, the sun, at least where I live, the sun's not set until 10 o' clock at night, right? So it's like if I want to learn something, something new, if I want to pick up cross stitch or, I don't know, some other habit, I. Or some new hobby, right? Like, I could be working on that in the evenings, I might be working on that in the early morning. There's just kind of maybe more energy there, more time and space and more energy there. So that can be a fun angle to play with as well. And even for me, like, as a business coach, selling in the summertime, I've always had great launches in the summertime, some of my best launches. And I think there's a few reasons for that. I think again, the energy is high in the summer for myself and for my clients. And also because I'm a sales coach, I focus so much on sales. A lot of my clients have questions about selling in the summertime. That's something I can help them with. How do I get people's attention? How do I deal with being on vacation? Both my clients are on vacation and I'm on vacation. My business can't stop just because I want to go on vacation, right? So how do we build a business that can accommodate that? I help my clients with all of these things. And so I would love to encourage you as we, you know, round the corner on May and head into June, you might feel the temptation of the summer slowdown. And instead of seeing it as a slowing down, I want you to lean into it. Think about leaning into it. As a time of excitement, as a time of opportunity. You know, people are on their phones, like at the pool, at the airport, they're scrolling, they're looking. And like I said, some of your competition, they might be on vacation, they might be taking a summer sabbatical, they might be engaging in that summer slowdown. And so there's this kind of rare opportunity moment where we have people online, maybe even at an increased rate, because, again, it sort of feels like for some people, there's more free time in the summer. Right? More unstructured time, let's say that. And at the same time, maybe less noise. So how do you want to take advantage of that? Let's get away from the idea of summer slowdown, summer slump, and see it as summer opportunity. How can you ask yourself, why does my client need me in the summertime? And how can I get excited about that? It can be so fun to play with that. So that was the first thing I wanted to talk about, was just, you know, how are we thinking about summer? How are we engaging with the summertime? You know, are you kind of using the summertime to give yourself a pass? Oh, people aren't going to buy from me. I'll just wait. Let me. I've heard this a number of times. Let me prepare for September. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't let that opportunity of summer go by. You could get booked out this summer. You could have an excellent launch this summer. Summer. I want you to have the thought. Summer is an amazing time to sell, and it just takes a little bit of thought and, you know, creative sort of brainstorming about your messaging and asking yourself, why? Why should they work with me in the summer to get you excited. Going back to last week's episode, I believe about conviction. This is how you can create conviction for yourself, right? Asking yourself, like, why is summer awesome for this? So some thoughts there in terms of selling in the summer. A little bit of a pep talk. Don't give yourself that pass. I know, it's, like, fun. Like, I've. I have felt this myself. I have some travel coming up, both for work and play, and part of me is like, yeah, my kids are home. Let's, like, go to the pool. Let's chill. And believe me, I'm gonna do plenty of play, plenty of chill. But I'm also locking in this summer. I'm going to be launching my mastermind later this summer. I need to prepare for that. I have so much amazing work that I'm doing with my clients, like summer Is a time of work hard, play hard. That's the approach that I personally am taking and wanted to share that opportunity with you all as well. On a sort of like a slightly different note, still about summer, but kind of coming back to how I'm approaching it. Right. That's kind of the theme here, is how I'm approaching summer. That is a bit. Everything I just shared is a bit on how I'm approaching summer and my business and from my sales and my mindset. Right. Like, I'm not slowing down. I'm getting excited about all of the people that are going to pay attention to me this summer, all of the opportunity I have to get in front of new people this summer, new clients I'm going to invite to work with me this summer. Like I said, summer has been some of my very best launches for the entire span of my business. I remember if you've been here a long, long time, when I had Crickets to Customers as my signature course. I remember my best launches were June, July. So keep that in mind. Now, I also just want to share on the personal side because I think it's always fun. I like listening to episodes where people talk not just about business, but the personal side and how they're managing their lives. And the intersection of life and business has always been a conversation that I love to have and something I love to be transparent about. Because like I said, I'm a parent and I've talked in previous years about being a summertime mom and what being a CEO summertime mom looks like. For me, I am approaching this year a bit differently than other years. And this is why I wanted to talk about this. This is, and this is a little bit of a mistake that I've made in the past. So if other people out there are falling into this, then this is really for you. This year, I have leaned in to more support than I think I might need. Okay, my mistake and the trap of summer as a summertime parent has been to think, but I can do it. All, right? Like, I'm home. And some of these thoughts are really kind of insidious and not helpful. Right. It's like kind of using entrepreneurship against yourself. I have been guilty of this, and it makes me feel guilty, ironically, is to have the thought, like, didn't I start my business to, like, spend time with my family? Didn't I leave my big job at Groupon because I didn't want to be in an office from 8 to 8? Like, I started my business because I wanted to be there with My kids. I wanted to have it all. I wanted to say yes to, like, everything, right? I wanted to say yes to that stay at home mom feeling. I wanted to say yes to a powerful career. So shouldn't I have them with me this summer? Shouldn't I get up at 5 o' clock in the morning and work until noon? Like, I have done some crazy things, y', all, Crazy, crazy things to try to be everything to everybody in the summertime. And unfortunately for me, what ends up happening is it's just not that enjoyable for anybody, probably. And I don't think I bring my best to my family when I'm maxing myself out in that way. If you've been listening to my podcast this year, you know that I'm going after this big, impossible goal of making a million in revenue, a million dollars in revenue in 12 months. And so to be the CEO who accomplishes that goal, I've really come face to face with the reality that I can't. I can't continue to operate like that. I can't keep putting myself so far on the back burner that, you know, I'm, you know, trying to give everything I have to the business, but it's probably not even the very best work that it could be. I'm trying to give everything to my kids, but maybe I'm a little resentful or coming off, you know, a little bit bitter or. Because it's not. It's. I don't feel supported, and then I'm certainly don't have any bandwidth for myself any time to do the things that fill my cup and just like, nobody wins. Right? And I think part of this getting really personal here, I know everybody's upbringing is different, but for me, a child of the 90s, like, I had a mom who stayed home, and I never went to any kind of summer camps. So the idea of camp has always been a little bit challenging for me because my summers were like, in the woods, in the dirt, running around with the neighborhood kids. And in my mind, I've always held that up as, like, this gold standard without really examining that and without really challenging that. Right. Like, I think that was a good childhood. It was a perfectly, like. I guess in my mind, I've always thought that that was, like, an idyllic part of growing up. But lately I've kind of challenged myself to ask, like, what if it's. What if there are even better summers than the summer that I had? Right? Like, trying to replicate what I had as a business owner who's going After a million is just. It's crazy. It's crazy for me, right? Like, it's not like the circumstances that my parents were in were completely different than how I'm wired and what, like my husband and I are building. And so that kind of leads me to wanting to say yes to a new and different kind of summer for my kids. Now, that's not to say they haven't done different camps. Like, they've, like, we're not newcomers to the concept of day camps, but I think in my mind I've always enrolled them with this little sense of, like, this is subpar. Like, this is not as good. Like, because you know how kids, like if you have kids, you know that they might complain sometimes, it might not be their favorite thing. They, sometimes they'd rather stay home. And so you can feel some guilt about that as an entrepreneur mom, when you have the thought, like, well, they could be home with me, like, I could make that work. And believe me, I've tried, like the summertime nanny and the babysitter, but my kids, when they know that I'm home and my husband works from home as well, like, it has. Let me just. I won't take you. I won't regal you with the experiences. But it has been. The word would be disastrous. It's been okay at the best of times, disastrous at the worst of times. Right. And so we have said yes to some kind of camp support pretty much every week this summer, except we do have some vacation. So I think it is going to be balanced. There's going to be, you know, vacation at the beginning of the summer, vacation at the end of the summer to see family in various parts of the US and when they, when we're not on vacation, they're going to a camp that is from 9 o' clock to 4 o'. Clock. And they do lots of fun things like swimming and lots of field trips. And I'm just saying yes to that as an experiment. And something that I have decided is that what that will allow me to do is go after my business dreams with the tenacity that I want to with this million dollar goal. I felt it was important for me to be transparent about the support that I'm saying yes to in order to achieve that goal. Right. And also I can have the thought that when four o' clock hits. So this is actually something I'm doing that's kind of on the tactical side. Uh, my, the earliest time I can pick the kids up will be 4 o'. Clock. So I'm Gonna pick them up. It's like a four to six window. I'm gonna get them at four and I'm gonna put on my calendar starting at 3:30 every day. I'm gonna have a wind down like a work shutdown routine. And I don't fully know what it's gonna be yet, but part of it will be writing in my journal and doing some, some coaching, coaching myself about and kind of like as, as odd as this may seem, like visualizing how I want my evening with them to go. So I'm gonna pick them up at 4 o' clock and the mindset that I'm gonna go into it with is starting at 4:00'. Clock. I am the stay at home mom. The stay at home mom, the magical summer mom energy at 4 o', clock, right? And from 4 o' clock until like my kids are starting to get older, they're 6 and 10. So like we can stay up a little bit from four until bedtime, which is darn near 10 o' clock some nights in the summer with the sun up, right? Like I get to do all of the fun things with them. We're gonna go to the pool all the time. We're going to do the lemonade stands, we're gonna do the summer bucket list, right? And I can bring all of that stay at home mom energy into that 4 o' clock pickup and have so much time with them, right? So instead of beating myself up about like, oh my gosh, like I'm sending them away for the summer or I'm like making them do this thing so that I can focus on my business. I'm being really honest and in, I'm being really honest and open here because I have a feeling that there are other mom parent entrepreneurs who have had this summer struggle. And I just really want to be so real about how I'm approaching is okay to say yes to the support. Like I said, I think I've been under supported in the summertime for 10 years, right? And that's been okay. My business has done well. But if I want to go to the next level, you know, I need to be able to say yes to that support knowing that it could be an amazing experience. Like it's, it's a for them. It's amazing how our brains again like just based on my own childhood, I'm like automatically assuming that that is the gold standard. But what if they love it? What if it's awesome? What if like it's just so fun. What if they make a new lifelong friendship Like I haven't really let myself consider all of the upside and there is research out there about like the importance of summer camps for kids and things like this. And so I just think it's interesting how that has got been like an unchecked and unchallenged thought in my head that I am open to and hoping can change for me this year, like redefining what our dream summer as a family looks like. Right. So all of that to say I am saying yes to that support. I, I, I've always been somebody who wants to have it all and I still think I can. Right. I want to have the million dollar business. I want to be the CEO who is going after it with all that she has. I want to take my business so seriously. I want to be a stay at home mom. I want to be the summer mom. I want to spend so much time with my kids, I want to make so many memories and I refuse to engage in any kind of story that I can't do all of that. Right. And if accepting that support and saying yes to that support means that I get to do it and can do it, then I'm gonna do that every single time. Right? So I wanted to share that because I just think, I wish I'd heard this. I wish I had heard this years and years ago. Um, it's such a, like, I think as moms and as entrepreneur moms, we have that thought of, I can't, I can do it. Right? Like I remember following people who were doing it that way and thinking, okay, okay, I can do that. But listen, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And also with a lot of these camps, I want to say it's possible to cancel them with enough notice. Right. So if it goes terribly, I can keep you all updated if you're interested. But I can always make a different plan. Right. But I'm so glad that we're trying this. Okay. What are other things that I'm thinking of this summer? Um, I am. Some of you have travel, a lot of you have travel and summer trips and like different things going on. Right? Me too. I have, I'll actually quite a bit of time off and I'm super excited about all the things I get to do. I'm going to a conference, I'm going to visit family on both like coasts basically at different points in the summer. And I'm doing a big launch. I'm going to be opening up my mastermind in July and there's a lot of work that goes into that. Right. So one thing I'm committed to is having my whole launch done before I take my first trip. So that means I have, at the time of this recording, I have a couple of weeks left. And again, this is the value of my kids going to camp. I have like two weeks to get my whole launch done so that when I'm traveling and I'm away, everything can be going. You guys are going to be listening to my podcast and seeing my invitations for my next brand new training that I'm creating. Like, everything will be going and I get to go beyond my vacation. So that's gonna be really important to me is having a plan for getting my launch completely finished and scheduled before my trip. Um, I am not always the best at this at all. I typically do not have an entire launch done. I've gotten close, but that's gonna be a new challenge for me. So that's something that I'm working on. And then again, just kind of on the personal side, I wanted to share some things that I'm doing to try to make our summer feel more grounded because I am a spontaneous kind of gal. I like fun, I like adventure. I am an Enneagra 7. If you know about the Enneagram, we're kind of the wild child and the wild card, it would say, of the Enneagram. But I'm also somebody who really does thrive on routine. And I struggle in the summer because there is less of it. So I'm trying to create some of that something I'm doing. And this is just like really practical tips for you all to try if you want. I saw this woman on TikTok, this mom who printed out a 12 week calendar and wrote in meals for the entire summer dinners. And that might sound really unhinged, but I'm gonna be doing that. I think it is such a good idea. My family rotates a lot of the same meals. The idea isn't to, like, follow the plan perfectly, but I don't know about you guys, but I am so tired of being like, what's for dinner? What's like, oh my God. I love the jokes out there that are like, nobody told me that growing up meant I would have to like, decide what's for dinner and make dinner. Like your whole life is just making dinner, right? If you know, you know. And so I like the idea of even just having a, like, one of the things I'm really trying to do this summer, this whole year with my, like, being Boring. This is also the other thing is, like, how do I bring boring into summer, which is usually a chaotic time. Summer has not been boring for my house. I'm trying to make summer a little bit more boring for everybody. Hot take, controversial take. Like, summer doesn't have to be like, yes to the summer magic, but it's okay to have a more boring summer. We are kind of saying yes to boring summer as a household. And when I hit my goal, I'll be able to tell y' all some of the sacrifices we had to make was boring summer. So one of the things I'm doing to be more boring is writing out all of these meals again. If we don't follow it perfectly, if we decide we want something else, if we decide we want to go out at the last minute or eat dinner at the pool or whatever, it's totally fine. But I am so tired of every day being like, what are we eating? What are we eating? Or even every week on Sunday, we need to make a meal plan. No, I'm just gonna write down dinner ideas every day for the summer. And I'll obviously, like, not do vacation days and things like that where we can be wherever we are, but just having something that I can reference and be like, oh, yeah, okay, tacos. Like, let's do it right. So I'm doing that. And then something I wrote down here is routine queen. I am just working on being a routine queen this summer. I am getting my workouts in. I'm so keeping up on my boot camp game. Either 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning. 8:30, I can bring a kiddo with me if I want to. But even, like, even if my kids sleeping in a little bit more, it's tempting to just like, sleep in and let them wake me up. But I'm gonna get up, and I have already have been did it today. Get up, go get my workout done. Try to keep the routines that I know really fuel me and help me feeling like again, this is what I mean when I say pouring into myself. Right? So the other thing we're doing too is we're bringing back our chore checklists. We have really fallen off of this. We have the skylight calendar, if you know what that is. It is literally just sitting unplugged in my kitchen. We're plugging it back in. I'm going to get chore checklists together. Just basic stuff for my kiddos, especially my older one has expressed interest in earning allowance again. So it's like, let's make our beds let's put clothes in the hamper, you know, and then we can do some more like, sophisticated chores as well, like bringing in the trash and recycling bins or sorting the laundry, things like this. But having a checklist that my kids can follow, you know, getting their water bottles filled and packed, making sure their sunscreen is on. We crave routine as grownups, but kids really crave routine as, as kids, right. I think at least in my household, we thrive on routine. And so bringing some of that routine with these checklists that the kids can just. You can check out the skylight calendar if you want. Something like this where it's a screen they get to walk up to and check things off when they do what they're supposed to do in the morning. Again, keeping things boring so that we can get our dopamine from completion, from task completion, from making a meaningful contribution from me making my meaningful contribution to my family through my business. My kids get to make a meaningful contribution to our family through their efforts. Right? And they get paid for that with their allowance. So those are just some of my ideas that I wanted to share about, like, how I'm approaching summer, having a more boring summer on purpose with still, like, so many good memories. I think funny enough, like, committing to the idea of boring summer doesn't mean a no fun summer, right? But there's something to be said for creating some simple routines, some simple rhythms for your household. Taking the mental fatigue and the decision fatigue out of decisions that you can just go ahead and make ahead of time. Like dinner for the summer. Like, imagine that your dinners for the summer are just planned. Hello? Are you kidding me? That's amazing. So doing more of that so that you can focus, bringing this full circle so that you can focus on locking in this summer, on selling this summer, on, you know, not falling victim to the summer slump or the summer slowdown, but actually the summer lock in. Right? So that's what I have for you friends. A little bit more of a personal episode, a little bit more of an a heart to heart. If you liked this episode, if you like this style of episode, I would love to know. I'd love to. I'd love to hear what you guys like on my show. So you can either DM me on Instagram. I love getting DMS from you all. I'm at hey, Steph Crowder. Or you can reply to any of the emails. If you're on our email list, you can just reply and I will see your response. And I'd love to know what you think. All right. If you're heading into summertime, I am thinking of you. I'm with you. I am you. We've got this. Especially if you're a parent, if it's not summer where you live. Maybe save this episode for when it's your turn. Right. And I can't wait for the next episode. My friends, thank you for listening today. I'll see you next time. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.